“It’s like a game out of a dream.”

For many like fourth-year Grace Simmons, the idea of a game played on ice where skateless players use a broom-like plastic stick to caress a volleyball-sized ball into a goal seems like a vague, fever dream-induced rendition of ice hockey. It’s the type of scene that would result from asking the average five-year-old to draw a hockey game from memory. The sticks look a little too small, the puck (ball? projectile?) looks a little too big, and the players look a little too disorganized.

But rest assured, “broomball” is very, very real and does in fact exist outside of dreams and the memory of a hypothetical five-year-old brain.

Forms of the sport can be traced back to the early 20th century. While some claim modern broomball was invented in Canada, others point to Duluth, Minnesota. Regardless, the game continued to gain popularity in Canada and the American Midwest throughout the 1900s, slowly manifesting itself as a winter staple for many in the region. In 1998, the International Federation of Broomball Associations (IFBA) was officially established. Fast forward another 28 years, and IFBA-recognized broomball programs can be found in eleven different countries, including Slovenia and Japan.

UChicago’s history of broomball is slightly murkier. According to Senior Associate Athletic Director for Recreation and Fitness Brian Bock, when the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center was built in 2003, many records were lost in the transition to the new building. But when Bock began working at UChicago that year, broomball had already established itself as an intramural (IM) cornerstone. “When alums come back, they all talk about broomball. I don’t know if it’s [from] the ’70s, ’80s, or ’90s, but it’s been around for at least 25 years,” Bock told the Maroon.

Today, broomball is comfortably UChicago’s most popular IM sport. Its 412 registered participants—not including the additional 10-team waitlist—is by far the most of any intramural offering. Notably, it is one of the few flagship IM leagues that is not only available to all genders but also graduates and undergraduates alike. “The great equalizer is ice,” Bock explained. “I don’t care if you’re a 23-year-old ex-college athlete or you’re an 18-year-old. You’re still going to fall.”

And fall they do. In fact, there’s not much “playing” being done in the average broomball game. The players with the required elegance to stay upright shuffle their way toward the ball in swarms and try their best to nudge (or whack) the ball forward, whereas most players are more focused on keeping their poorly sized helmets out of their eyes than generating any sort of attacking threat. The remaining players can be found either on the ground, trying to regain feeling in their hands, or crowded around the nearest goal, trying to keep two feet firmly on the ice.

The vast majority of games either end in a 1–0 Sean Dyche-ian affair or are too chaotic to crown a winner without a penalty shootout at the end to break the deadlock. Despite its eccentricity, hockey’s less elegant younger cousin has unequivocally stolen the hearts of UChicagoans.

“I grew up playing all sorts of sports and I played every IM under the sun. Broomball is just this unique combination of things that you don’t get anywhere else,” fourth-year Nick Rinaldi explained. “Just random is the best way to describe it.”

“It’s one of those quirky UChicago sports. There’s no pressure to it; it’s just a lot of fun. It’s the type of thing that you do for the memories,” Simmons added. “I don’t think that there are a ton of opportunities [like broomball]; even with a lot of RSOs you have to apply to get into them, but this is just purely stupid fun.”

UChicago’s courses are rigorous, its nine-week quarters are demanding, and the lofty expectations set by the University’s professors are only surpassed by the expectations students place on themselves. In many ways, broomball is the antithesis of UChicago—lighthearted, relatively uncompetitive, and, for all intents and purposes, inconsequential. Yet, on nearly every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday night of winter quarter, dozens of students leave the warmth of their favorite libraries to face Chicago’s bone-chilling winter, making the trek to the Midway Plaisance Ice Rink broom in hand.

“People are passionate. You might not be the best athlete, but you’re passionate about what you do and you step between the lines and you want to win and have fun. I think it translates well in a place like this,” Bock added.

After all, despite all its silliness, broomball is still a sport and the passion of UChicago’s broomballers is not confined just to whimsy. Where there is sport, there is a desire to win. And in the 2026 broomball season, no collection of broomballers mastered the art of winning quite like team Officially Washed.

In the six games leading up to the season’s semifinals, Officially Washed recorded six wins, scoring an astonishing 31 goals while conceding just once. With many former hockey and field hockey players on the roster, Officially Washed knew they had a leg up on the competition. More importantly, they knew how to exploit it. “Within hockey and field hockey, there’s terminology like ‘chip,’ ‘center,’ and ‘boards’ that each mean a specific thing,” first-year team member Kevin Liao explained. “Broomball is a similar sport to hockey, so we can carry it over.”

In a sport where goals are so hard to come by, Officially Washed had mastered the art of putting ball in net. But their success was not just a product of strategy and organization. For Rinaldi, Officially Washed’s team captain, it was a case of simply wanting it more. “We’re more fearless than the other teams. We don’t mind sprinting and falling sometimes.” Rinaldi told the Maroon.

Fueled by their tactical prowess and unmatched determination, Officially Washed had reached 2016 Golden State Warriors levels of sporting dominance. They were a true force to be reckoned with, and as the season’s semifinals loomed, broomball immortality was within an arm’s reach. But when the Midway Plaisance Ice Rink was reduced from the mecca of UChicago broomball to nothing more than a kiddy pool following a historic stretch of warm weather, the team’s hopes of ending the season with silverware were in jeopardy.

With four teams still alive and no ice rink, crowning a champion would require a bit of creativity. Luckily, this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. Since 2003, two such seasons produced unorthodox endings due to weather: the first season was decided with floor hockey matches in Ratner while the second—which only had its championship game cancelled—was concluded through the declaration of co champions.

With the latter option unanimously disregarded by the remaining teams and the former option deemed impractical given Ratner’s tight end-of-quarter schedule, a compromise was struck. Both semifinals and the final would be decided by five to seven person penalty shootouts in the Ratner Auxiliary Gym. Officially Washed would have the chance to cap off their historic season with a championship.

But just like their NBA counterparts, fate had other plans for team Officially Washed. The broomball powerhouse fell in excruciating fashion to the Dusters, a team that had made it to the semifinals in a very different fashion. “All our regular season games were either 1–0 or 0–0 then a shootout,” fourth-year Dusters team captain AJ DeRosa explained. “We were definitely pretty good at shootouts, so [the shootout format] didn’t hurt.”

Following the Dusters’s improbable semifinal victory, sights quickly shifted to Strongin House, their championship match opponents who were no strangers to eking out close victories themselves. Both teams had entered the day with perfect records and identical goal differentials, but in the end, the Dusters proved too clinical in front of goal, beating Strongin 5–4 in the highest-scoring shootout of the day. Just like that, one hour and three gymnasium floor penalty shootouts later, the 2026 broomball season had come to an end.

The long-awaited broomball finale was underwhelming in a sense. Many of the sport’s most endearing qualities were lost in the transition from ice to hardwood. There were no slips, falls, nor trademark moments of broomball magic. The shootouts brought suspense but lacked the disarray and camaraderie that have come to define broomball at UChicago.

But there was also something poetic about the season’s conclusion. Seeing David slay Goliath was a sight to behold for an impartial broomball enthusiast like myself. For a sport that is all about leveling the playing field, the final’s format did so beautifully. Talent was neutralized, chaos took center stage, and memories were made in the process.

At the end of the day, is there anything more broomball than that?